Superman Movie Minute #10 – Don’t Call Me Sugar

November 27, 2017

SUPERMAN MOVIE MINUTE #10 – Don’t Call Me Sugar

Fire and Water Network All-Stars Chris Franklin and Rob Kelly bring you SUPERMAN MOVIE MINUTE, where they analyze, scrutinize, and you’ll-believe-a-man-can-fly-ize the classic 1978 film starring Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, and Marlon Brando, five minutes at a time!

In minutes 46:00 – 50:00, Kal-El completes his education, we get our first glimpse of Superman, and Clark Kent gets a job at The Daily Planet.

I’d like to think he wasn’t there for 12 years, but it does kind of work with Clark’s naive act. Maybe it’s not all an act?

It also meshes well with Superman’s clear moral compass. He’s in the Fortress for the bulk of Vietnam and also Watergate, and a lot of turmoil and moral questioning in the world. Going straight from the moral upbringing of the Kents to the sequestered Fortress, with no outside influences in-between, it kept him more pure. Just a thought!

FYI Jackie Cooper starred in one of the first films adapted from a comic strip: Skippy (1931). For his performance, Cooper was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar – at age 9!! He may still hold the record for being the youngest performer ever nominated for a lead role. Here he talking his casting in Superman:

When John Williams passes there will be no end to the Star Wars main theme. For me, Superman: The Movie is pound-for-pound the better soundtrack, and my favorite part is in The Fortress of Solitude when Jor-El and Clark travel through time and space. Since this is the last we see of Jor-El in the theatrical version, I’ve usually seen the crystalline face as a final death mask, Jor-El having finished teaching his son who now leaves the nest. And I don’t think he returns to either the Fortress or Kansas in the theatrical version.

Even though I’m a bigger fan of Star Wars than Superman, I concede that Williams’ theme from SUPERMAN is the best piece of music ever written for a film, followed closely by his “March from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.” Only after those two can we start talking about his music from Star Wars.

Now, I’m picturing Clark coming home to the farm for the first time with 12 years worth of dirty laundry for Martha to deal with. Whatever Jor-El knows about the human heart and the 28 known galaxies, I’m betting he doesn’t know the first thing about washing clothes.